Shark would occasionally answer questions from readers as I do. They would write in, he would post their questions, and answer them. It’s a great way to produce content for your readers. It helps everybody.
The following is a long, 3-page question from a guy who is looking for advice about his cheating ex from 6 months ago. He tries to sound “alpha” and that he is “winning” some sort of battle against her (which is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard), but this is typical of insecure men with issues.
He has written such a long story because he can’t get her off his mind. It’s very obvious to me that he’s obsessed with his ex despite trying to make it appear that he has moved on and isn’t into her anymore.
But this guy clearly has deep anger issues about her. Read on and I hope you learn something from this:
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Hey Shark
Back in December you gave me some advice on how to handle a situation with a girl I was with for 5+ years. I had unknowingly backslid hard thinking that our relationship had the longevity to negate the need for game. I quickly learned soon after your response and reading of ‘The Black Flag’ that you must never stop running game; that you must always maintain your frame.
Anyway, if you want to refer back to my comment to refresh your memory (it was detailed) feel free, but the gist is: I lived with this girl for over 5 years and things were great, gradually it was perceived by her that I was struggling to make a business work when I began asking her to pay for her share of our bills, she began losing attraction for me as a provider and protector, etc.
I apologized (looking back I can’t believe some of the things I said), she began sneaking around behind my back and cheating on me, I acted out emotionally and was obviously upset (serious DLV), she moved out, then said she was confused and was considering coming back, I told her there was no chance of revival, she began seeking validation by texting me, and I gave it to her by trying to hang out with her.
This is when I asked you for advice. You basically told me to forget about her, that the relationship has way too much baggage, and once a girl cheats there is no going back because subconsciously she will assume it is acceptable. Truth.
So I did my best to keep every thought of her out of my head and it worked as I was able to focus on new chicks and myself. I ignored her weekly texts. Her friend lives in the top floor apartment of my house, so as she realized I was not going to try to get her back, she began coming over to my house more often.
She began parking in my typical spot right outside of my front door obviously trying to be seen. This continues week after week. She makes as much noise as she can coming in and out of my house. I hear her asking her friend ‘whose car is that?’ when she notices one of my new girls’ cars outside.
A month later, she hears through a friend that I am hanging out with another girl and she’s taking me out for my birthday that weekend. My ex invites me out for a harmless birthday drink and I accept, thinking that I am going to subtly show her how great my life is (which it was then and is now), and I’m not going to give her an inch. We go out, she is obviously physically attracted to me again (since I have been hitting the gym hard (up 20lbs since October), lots of inappropriate for Disney World type of kino, some nasty talk, whatever…
Anyway, we both get sufficiently drunk that I start thinking about bringing her back to my place (she’s an easy 9). She seems totally down with it, but when we get back to my place (her car was there), instead of just leading her inside or offering to show her my new pet marmocet, I ask her if she’s coming in.
She tells me she’s really attracted to me but she thinks it’s too soon since we just broke up, she says if she comes in we’re gonna have secks and she’s afraid of what will happen afterwards (doesn’t want to regret her decision, I chose this path and now I’m on it) yada, yada. She says that I’m going to get laid by some girl the next night anyway.
After some back and forth, I say ‘whatever’ and get out of the car, knowing that I fucked up. She follows and asks me if I’m mad. I say ‘it’s whatever’. We’re both pretty hammered. She gives me a hug and leaves. I go in the house thinking I lost control of the situation and I’m really pissed at myself.
I think about ‘The Black Flag’ and how this bastard Shark is just dead right about this stuff. At that very moment, your words were fully accepted as truth. As a sidenote, I just wanted to plow her, nothing more, as I had and still have a variety of girls at the ready.
She texts me at the crack of dawn the next morning saying ‘Happy Bday’ and I text her back thanks, she texts me back looking for more conversation and I say nothing. She calls me a few weeks later to ask me a stupid question about her car that anyone else could tell her. I brush her off. Unsolicited, she tells me about what’s happening in her life like I should care and I don’t and it’s clear.
A few more weeks go by and it is the end of February. I see her leaving my house early in the morning as I am coming back from a girl’s apartment. She asks me where I’ve been and I just shake my head and tell her she’s not looking so good with a straight face (I meant it). She says her sister just had a baby earlier that morning and she was too wasted to drive to see her. I said ‘that sucks’ and went in the house. She looked at me longingly like I should care; that she could cry.
After that, she stopped coming over to my house to see her friend.
She had been nice and friendly and seemingly hopeful of some type of something between us in the future up until this point, but she texted me a few weeks later that she was coming to take her grill that she told me I could keep (mind you I still have a bunch of random shit of hers in my basement).
I told her she could have it when I moved out and she sent me a cunty text which I ignored. I then saw her drive by my house as I was walking to my door about an hour later. She drove by like a creep with some dude in her car and when she saw me she slowed way down like she wanted to turn around and go back the other way. I just grilled her as she drove by and she gave me this super gay embarrassed grin as she passed.
I texted her and asked her how old she was. I did not see her again for two months.
This past weekend I saw her boss at a bar and ended up talking to him for a while since we used to be pretty good friends and I hadn’t seen him in 5 months or so. He told me things were the same with ‘the business’ and my ex was still slaving away for them. I told him about my new job and general things about how sweet my life is. I made it a point to insinuate how much money I was making since I knew whatever I said would make it back to my ex. I was with this hotass girl that looks similar to her to top it off. Anyway, what do you suppose happened the next day?
I get a text from her straight out of Forgetting Sarah Marshall or something like that: ‘Steve said he saw you the other night (it was last night and this dude probably had just told her) and he said you looked really great and sounded really great. Glad your job is going well!’ I didn’t respond and still haven’t.
Before we broke up, she made it clear that she lost attraction for me because I was not as jacked as I used to be (I ate a vegan diet because of her, jesus), and because she felt insecure about our future in terms of my income generating abilities, i.e. you have lots of great ideas, but I don’t think you will make any of them work. Now she knows I look good and I have money. I missed her for a month or so and still miss some of the best parts of her, inevitably when I don’t see them in another girl, but for her to leave me when I was down, for her not to believe in me, and cheat on me for fux sake, is all unforgiveable, backsliding or not, and getting back with her has never been an option.
Now she knows for sure that I truly don’t give a shit about her (she KNOWS this or at least her hamster does) and honestly I don’t. You may not believe me but I don’t. I just think she is finally coming to grips with the fact that I will never be a part of her life again and she is realizing what it means to break up almost 6 months later. She knows I’m making a healthy salary and have a business on the side, she sees my new car (it’s not an Accord), she knows there are other girls, and she knows I’m happy without her.
So I’m writing to you to get your opinion partly because I never thanked you for your golden advice months ago, and also because I feel like I owe it to myself since you led me down a path to success when I could have gone down a path of self destruction or maybe just self loathing and apathy. Plus you enjoy reading detailed stories, yes?
So what to do, Shark? Is she trying once again to lure me in so she can say ‘ish don’t think so’ again and feel validated? Is she trying to test me to see if I’m really as alpha as she may perceive me to be now? Does she really want to me to join her minions in the friend zone (she already knows being friends is not an option)? Does she want to find out if she still has feelings for me? Does she want to steal my kidneys and sell them? Probably all of the above…
My head tells me to just keep ignoring her, but my gut says ignoring her is the beta route to take. I think that talking to her and dominating her mental faculties through sheer masculine will may solidify my transition and make me feel even more all-powerful. I can tell you honestly that my goals in life include exploring the plethora of women available in the world and in no way do I want to get involved in a soulsucking relationship with anyone, especially this girl. So respond and dominate or ignore?
I’m aware that just writing this is placing way too much importance on this girl, but you must trust me that the only time I spend thinking about this girl is when I get it shoved in my face by an interloper. This comment is for the education of myself and other readers that are faced with this same dilemma. I feel dirty just writing this. I’m going to the gym.
Shark’s Reply:
Excellent.
All of the above. Her faux indignation is a combination of affirmation seeking behavior, a need to re assess your frame, and authentic attraction which she’s having trouble coming to terms with. Betatizing you or selling your kidneys would be the obvious cures; but (hopefully) ones she’ll never get. Assuming your value is continuing to shoot up and up, I suspect her hamster is having trouble reconciling with her compulsion to trade up the hypergamy ladder considering that what she dated in the past dwarfs her future prospects.
And as a result, is trying to turn you into a perceived beta to increase the viability of her other options and reaffirm her own value. And of course, now that you guys aren’t in direct contact with each other, she has no way to shit test you other than to find side avenues that grant proximity and plausible deniability at the same time (she wants to be around you, but needs another reason other than you).
That instance on your birthday was handled incorrectly as far as your goals are concerned. If you wanted to get back with her, what you did was right. But if your goal was secks with no strings attached, you should’ve led her inside; a bold move I’m sure she wouldn’t have second guessed. Any proceeding LMR from then on could easily be defused by short bursts of freezing out. To simplify further:
Her rationalization of not wanting things to escalate falls in line with our theory of “never listen to what a girl says, only what she does.” Always see actions in light of their most elementary intentions. Why is a girl interested in you? Attraction + Rapport.
If attraction was already there, what was missing that kept her from asking to come inside herself? Rapport. A woman never thinks logically (especially not when under the influence), she thinks emotionally. Her reason for not wanting to come inside couldn’t have anything to do with a rational concern over the longterm stability of your relationship and/or her own well being.
She felt that the gap between your statuses was too far and that having secks with you would only widen it. When you asked “are you coming in?” You did the right thing in terms of establishing frame control, and one of strong detachment and amused mastery; but it took you too far out of her own reach. She knows you already have hand, this would’ve been giving you everything else.
The things she said, “You’re going to have secks with another girl tomorrow anyways,” “Are you mad?” and texting you the next day are all symptoms of this. Starting with the first; her hamster caused her to blurt out one of its insecurities in Freudian fashion, she wanted to see if “you’re mad” because by eliciting an emotional response from you she would’ve gotten hand again (which you could have conceded to and then turned the entire thing into a huge emotional hate fuck), and she is torn between wanting you and wanting you to want her.
Ignore it, do not try and reengage even under a “new frame.” To solidify your transition would mean to let go of it. Your urge to dominate it is stemming from a deep seated need for self-affirmation from a girl that previously cheated on you; a type of ego confirmation that says “Yes, now I KNOW I’m Alpha because I conquered the greatest symbol of my Beta self,” but so long as you need something to solidify your transition in the first place, you can’t get there. The end of the journey comes when you no longer want to quantify your progress.
This entire dynamic is poison for you and needs to be cut. You’re doing well, continue it. I also notice, and this may or may not be true, that you chose a very specific way of acting on your birthday incident. Like I said, you had two options:
(a) Not have secks but retain strong frame
(b) Have secks even if you need to concede a bit, gives you secks if that’s all you care about
Being a reader here by then and already on your way to a better life, I’m sure you were at least subconsciously aware of the second option. But still, you didn’t choose (b), you chose (a). You’ll have to figure out if that’s because there are lingering remnants of a Oneitis there or because she shook up your frame so strongly in the past that you are now more inclined to remain unshakable (a rarer strain of Oneitis).
But this has the ironic double effect of meaning she DID get to you, because she caused you to react by actively choosing to remain unreactive (if that makes any sense). If you’ve read the post on Golden Nuggets, recall how important it is to know thyself. Be in tune with your subconscious and understand where your weaknesses lie.
Your conscious mind will tend to justify them as strengths, but they are not. You see her as the greatest reminder of your beta past and now feel the need to conquer it as a way to finally objectively conquer your beta self; this is why your gut instinct does not agree with passively ignoring it. But to conquer it IS to let go of it – it doesn’t work the other way around.
Rick’s Comments:
What I will say about this situation is that the guy who asked this question has deep insecurity issues. He’s been broken up with his ex for over 6 months and is still thinking a lot about her.
He’s thinking about her so much that he wrote a 3 page essay to Shark. That alone tells you how much power she still has over him, despite him trying to convince himself that he has the power.
His wordage is also very cringe. “She’s a solid 9,” and “I just wanted to plow her” are examples of how immature this kid is. But, he’s trying to feel “alpha” about himself which is what’s actually holding him back.
Whenever a guy tries to be “alpha” it’s pretty clear that he’s actually the opposite of that. It’s so obvious that he is still in love with his ex in a toxic way and can’t get over the fact that she cheated on him.
Getting cheated on sucks. But, continuing to allow her to occupy your thoughts is a recipe for disaster. From what this guy has written, it seems as if his entire life revolves around making his ex jealous.
That’s such a toxic way to live. It’s such a bad mentality.
At the end of Shark’s reply, he basically tells him to forget about her and start doing things for himself. He tells him to let go of her. And that’s what he needs to do. That’s exactly what I’m saying above.
By not letting her go, everything he’s doing in his life is deeply rooted in anger towards his ex. He is driven to make his ex jealous.
Don’t be like this guy. Let your ex go and do things for YOU. Improve yourself because you want to improve it; not because you want to make your ex miss you.
Until you let her go, you will never get over your cheating ex. She will continue to haunt your thoughts and affect you in deeper ways than you realize.
You must let go!
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